The general aim of this project is the description and explanation of changes in the labor force activity and retirement behavior of older workers between 1860 and 1980. It will utilize information in the Union Army recruit public-use tape, in other collateral records of the Pension Bureau, and in other sources (including census manuscripts and labor surveys). The longitudinal data produced by this project will allow scrutiny of the precise nature of labor force activity and retirement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, partly by evaluating what effect the Civil War pension had on retirement in the 1890s and later, when the benefits became more generous. It will also examine of the effects of eligibility for the pension on retirement by comparing the veterans with other workers in micro data sets (such as the census public use samples of 1880, 1900, and 1910 and labor survey documents) and published census and survey results. The study will be carried closer to the present by the use of the census public use samples of 1940-1980. The effects health and morbidity on occupation and labor force participation will be studied, as well as the hypothesis that there was progressive "deskilling" of jobs for older workers in this earlier period. Since some of the collateral data sets contain information on homeownership, it will be possible to examine the influence of that variable on the retirement decision and occupation. There also exists the possibility that, since this is a longitudinal data set, the effects of occupational and geographic mobility on retirement and labor force activity later in life can be studied. Studying the transfers experienced by the Civil War generation and their effects provides a basis for assessing future transfers.